George Bush’s Veto Won’t Save My Life

At 7 a.m. on Election Day in 2004, I was in the pre-operative suite of Cedar’s Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Two surgical teams came to speak with me before my 12-hour operation for Crohn’s disease was set to begin. I asked them the standard logistical questions anyone would ask them before a surgery of that magnitude, but then I cut to the chase: Were my surgeons planning on voting today? I asked them, in a half-kidding, half-serious tone and told them that if I woke up and George Bush was still our President, then I was going to “lose my mind.” They smiled and took me into the operating room.

President Bush has only used his veto power three times in his entire seven years in office, the fewest in presidential history. His first was used to veto a stem-cell bill sent to him by Congress last year. His third was used last month, to veto the very same bill which would allow the use federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.

Polls now show that over 70 percent of Americans now support some form of embryonic stem cell research. That, along with even more support for other forms of research such as Mesenchymal and Adult stem cell research, means the consensus is clear: Americans want to see this research go forward, and go forward now.

I was a freshman in high school when Michael J. Fox stunned the world as he opted to take the road less traveled and advocate Parkinson’s disease research. The actor was on the top of his world, as he held the lead role in “Spin City.” But Fox insisted that he had a greater calling—a moral imperative to advocate for those in his predicament. And advocate he did.

Last election cycle Mr. Fox took to the airways, urging constituents in districts across the country to think carefully about whom they were casting their votes for, because this was going to dramatically affect the landscape of stem cell research. This was the third election cycle in which the actor-turned-activist supported candidates who favored expanding embryonic stem cell research, but it’s the first time his intervention made a momentous impact.

In the end, Fox’s candidates won five out of five Senate races, and 15 of 17 races overall. But Fox was quick to remind critics that he supported Republicans like Arlen Specter who favor the research, because this was a “non-political issue which required bipartisan support.”

President Bush has gone to great lengths to make the impression that his firm stance on prohibiting the use of embryonic stem cells for research will save lives. But the reality is most embryos from the clinics go unused, and therefore die anyway. What’s more, many donors to in-vitro fertilization clinics have said that if their embryos go unclaimed or unused, they would want them to be used for research. So the claim that denying Americans access to this research will “save babies,” when far more lives will be extended—if not saved—due to medical breakthroughs from stem cell research is simply not credible.

Bush’s youngest brother Marvin has Colitis—a similar form of Crohn’s. Marvin Bush nearly died from the disease, too, when campaigning for his father 1985. He was rushed to the hospital when doctors discovered that he required an emergency operation to remove his entire colon. They gave Marvin a colostomy bag—an inserted device to re-route food away from inflamed tissue in the gut. Today, Marvin still lives with that very same bag he received in 1985.

It’s one thing to claim that morals are the backbone for your decisions. It’s another to candidly admit that you are misinformed, and do not completely know the facts of an issue, like embryonic stem cell research.

I too, was initially uninformed about the issue until I learned that stem cells could quite possibly turn my life around. After battling Crohn’s since the age of 12, I, like so many Americans, thought that even if the President gave the green light, it would only have a marginal impact because many forms of therapies are still five to 10 years off from making it to market. But this also couldn’t be further from the truth.

Later this summer I will be enrolling in a clinical trial that uses Mesenchymal stem cells to treat Crohn’s disease. What’s utmost encouraging is that this particular therapy was given fast-track status from the Food and Drug Administration for Crohn’s this past spring, based on the unprecedented safety and efficacy in Phase II last year.

So now it’s Phase III and it’s my turn. After nearly dying from this disease before I came to UC Berkeley, this is unquestionably the kind of news that gets me out of bed in the morning. You wait your whole life for breakthroughs like this. But there is an equal an opposing question I ask myself each night before I go to sleep: Where would the state of research be if we didn’t have our President stymieing the progress? After spending my life on the front-lines of a disease that nearly killed me on multiple occasions, I can’t help but wonder.

As our President continues to make obtuse decisions, he is dashing the hope of millions of Americans like myself, who are literally fighting for their lives. It turns out my doctors did in fact get out to vote on election day, but most Americans did not.

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